ALL THINGS BIG AND SMALL 2.0

* photo shows a collection of jazz archtops, seen through the locked grill door of GuitarsNJazz, a shop in Summit New Jersey, that sells only jazz archtops and jazz guitar amplifiers. If you are a jazz guitar player, I suggest you pay him a visit. He's a great guy and he gives great advice . Fact: 95 % of guitar players own more than one guitar. This is because many guitarists suffer from a disease known in guitar-playing circles as GAS or Guitar Acquisition Syndrome. GAS manifests itself as an itch which can only be temporarily relieved by the purchase of a guitar. Severe cases of GAS can make the patient accumulate more than 100 guitars. GAS has been known to be the cause of broken marriages, financial bankruptcy and unemployment. Nevertheless, there are sound reasons why guitar players have more guitars than drummers have drums, piano players have pianos and sax players have saxaphones. 1. A Steinway sounds different from a Yamaha piano. But A Fender Stratocaster sounds even mor...

The question whether technical analysis [TA] [or 'charting' as referred to by the less initiated] works has been asked many, many times. Countless studies have been done, some of which show that TA does make a significant difference, and some show that TA does not make any difference to investment performance. For more details of such studies, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_analysis . I will use this short article just to recollect my personal experience with TA. For more than a decade, I studied TA, and tried to apply it. I studied all manner of TA from classical charting, to Candlesticks, to the hundreds of Indicators from Moving Averages, to RSI, MACD and the more esoteric ones ones that are constantly being invented. I read about Elliot Waves and Gann Charts, and how some even used astrology to analyse the markets. I delved into Neural Networks, Genetic Algorithms and all manner of pattern recognition, classification and forecasting techniques to feed the Pric...

During the great Depression of 1929, many railway dining cars were converted to mobile restaurants or 'diners'. Originally catering to blue-collar workers at factory sites, the Diner soon evolved to become a quintessentially American institution evoking images of a home town/ small town meeting/eating place serving typical American fare at a fair price. This is where you brought your girlfriend for a steak and a milk shake and to listen to the juke box, and this is where you met your friends for a chat after work. Or this is where the small-town police officer goes for a quick bite. You can sit at the counter, order your breakfast of two eggs sunny-side up with corned beef hash and coffee, read your newspapers and chat with the cook frying up your meal three feet away. This is also where the single-mother waitress with the stringy blonde hair who is on a first-name basis with every customer confides in you about her latest beau and you left her a big tip as consolation. Diners ...